No thoughts about the fish, but I was recently very surprised to learn that some people exclude my country, Brazil, from “western” culture. Like you did opposing “developing” and “westerners”.

Aside from geographical position, I certainly feel closer in culture to North America and Europe than to Middle-East or East-Asia cultures.

Every time I hear a statement with ”in the western culture…” I always identify myself with it.

So what do you, in your western culture, do with meat?

We are talking about leaving meat out of the fridge in a sealed anaerobic environment, which is quite different.

I think it's weird how the US put offloads most of the responsibility for preventing diseases to the supply chain and buyer, and not closer to the source. Lack of refrigerated trucks and unreliable power supply means we cannot rely on temperature being kept below specific temperatures. As a result, the regulations, processing and packaging are all work in tandem for safe food these conditions,e.g. regulations on how animals are reared, transported slaughtered, pasteurization and vacuum packaging. As an example, there are multiple brands of milk that's shelf-stable for months at room temperature.

> What are your thoughts when you hear Westerners talking about the danger of leaving a meat out of the fridge for a couple of hours and stuff like that?

It's not any different from the anywhere in the world, you have to be careful about how you handle food, or you will have a bad time.

As long as it’s not vacuum sealed, you can leave it on the counter all day. Even in the west we defrost meat this way :)

No "we" don't.

That is expressly against USDA guidelines that say meat left in the danger zone[1] for more than 2 hours should not be consumed.

I don't eat meat, but my husband does, and he defrosts his meat in the fridge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_zone_(food_safety)

Ahhh... Don't tell the health department. :)

Huh? In Austrian supermarkets meat just lies in a cool counter and you ask the staff to cut you some pieces. Additionally, there would be some packed meat in a fridge. I think it's the same in most European countries, I guess?

There are western developing countries.

And those who live there and read HN probably never faced the issues you have in mind for "developing countries".

My wife leaves meat out of the fridge for the practically the whole day...